McAfee Post About Gary Johnson Draws Support and Criticism

A rumor has spread that if I do not get the Libertarian nomination I will abandon the party. Totally untrue. What I said was that I would completely support any candidate running with the single exception of Gary Johnson. If Johnson does get the nomination, then it is clear that I misjudged the Party and I do not belong here. Nothing and no-one will change my mind on this.

– John McAfee

This status drew both criticism and affirmation from McAfee’s followers. One person commented:

I am confused too. As a Gary Johnson supporter I don’t understand your logic. I like both of you and see some differences, but not enough to warrant this statement. You have confused the entire party Mr. John McAfee.

Mr. McAfee responded:

I am not trying to change anyone’s mind. I was merely responding to the unfounded rumor that if I did not get the nomination I would leave the party.

Another user commented on the post:

Agreed – Johnson is not really a “Libertarian” IMHO

Mr. McAfee affirmed:

I know better than anyone.

Outside Responses

J. Wilson of alibertarianfuture.com also covered this story, but failed to reach out to Mr. McAfee for clarification about his Facebook post. You can find a link to the article here. Here, Wilson argues that by not supporting Gov. Johnson, who may end up being the party’s nominee, Mr. McAfee is inadvertently abandoning the Libertarian Party.

This announcement from McAfee that he won’t support Johnson is more of a de facto endorsement of Austin Petersen if anything.

He also released the following comment to LibertyBuzz:

McAfee doesn’t want to play the party games and endorse someone who wants to force Jews to bake Nazi cakes, perform mental health screenings in order to practice their 2nd amendment rights, or push fallacious gender pay gap fallacies. It’s hand to blame him. Of course, we could all work together and be happy if I win, because then McAfee and Johnson can finally unite under my banner as they both have said they’d do if I win. There’s only one candidate with zero campaign debt, real political experience, and a national campaign. I do hope that Johnson is able to put his financial woes and other problems associated with his 2012 campaign behind him so that we can all come out stronger in 2016, and work together for the good of our nation.

Mr. McAfee told LibertyBuzz:

My only comment is that the public reaction has been overwhelmingly positive for my position. My Facebook post received 440 likes and 200 shares – a record for my Facebook page, and my Twitter account received 74 hearts – another near record. The ratio of likes to negative comments has been 3 to 1 on Facebook and 10 to 1 on Twitter.

Gov. Gary Johnson did not post a response to social media or his website. When contacted by LibertyBuzz, he declined to comment.

Damn. I guess I was delusional. I thought that among libertarian allies we could have a positive civil presidential campaign. I promised I would be candid about what goes on behind the scenes. But I wanted to avoid this.

After John McAfee publicly posted that he would never support Gary Johnson, and nothing can change his mind, I’ve been flooded with questions of whether I would support Gary Johnson if he becomes the nominee. Of course. Gary is certainly a much better option to support than Trump or Hillary. Despite disputes over technicalities, Gary Johnson is a public champion of the liberty cause. But McAfee’s comments had nothing to do with that. He was very disturbed by some seriously shady behavior from the Gary Johnson campaign. I was too, but I had no intention to discuss it publicly, fighting just creates an embarrassing mess for our party, I have so many other things going on I’m very excited about, I don’t want stupid shit like this to be a distraction to what I’m trying to accomplish here. But I don’t blame McAfee, he had legit reasons to be disturbed.

I might as well explain it, as McAfee has already made the spat public. And people are confused and wondering what’s going on. Gary Johnson’s campaign team offered money to people on our team to come over to their team. When that wasn’t accepted, Johnson’s campaign team suggested there’s money for people on our team just to simply quit on us and relax at home. Yeah. Seriously. Also, not only has Gary Johnson’s campaign team purchased a ton of flights and hotel rooms for delegates willing to commit to Gary Johnson at the National LP Convention in Orlando, they’ve also purchased all the rest of the available rooms at the convention hotel, that might remain empty, but only on the dates before the presidential vote is held. After the presidential vote, there are plenty of hotel rooms available.

When I came on board this campaign 2 weeks ago, John McAfee had a positive attitude towards Gary Johnson. When I told him we should remain cordial and even complimentary towards Gary Johnson, McAfee was all for it. Gary Johnson has just made an immediate personal enemy out of John McAfee. A major loss for Gary Johnson into the future, and a foolish screw-up from the Johnson campaign team. That’s what this is all about.

I want to give Gary Johnson the full benefit of the doubt here, and ask him to rein in some of the vicious behavior from his campaign team. Gary Johnson left the Republican Party to join the Libertarian Party, because his heart is with us. Unfortunately, it’s well known that the Republican Party political campaign environment is a cesspool of scheming viciousness. Republican candidates don’t often have a sense of common cause, they’re out to fuck each other up. My optimistic guess is that elements of Gary Johnson’s campaign team grew up in that awful environment, and are bringing that shadiness to the Libertarian Party.

I honestly don’t understand. Reputation in politics is critical. Do they think their behavior won’t affect their reputation? One of the biggest reason I would like to avoid fighting with Gary Johnson’s campaign is because I have so many friends throughout the liberty scene, and I have good friends that are committed Gary Johnson supporters, and I understand their reasons, and I respect them. They’re working hard for Gary Johnson right now, I don’t want them to take things personally, and I have no desire to see us all turn on each other. There might be some retaliatory attacks on me because I’m being so candid here. I really don’t care. Let them have their fun, if they must. But I would prefer constructive dialogue. Let’s knock this shit off, and simply compete for the hearts and minds of delegate voters.

Anyway, none of this really concerned me, because we didn’t lose people on our campaign team. And I just don’t care if Johnson’s campaign buys up a bunch of empty hotel rooms. Please, go to Gary Johnson’s site, click donate, and help pay for an empty hotel room at the National Convention. That’s not going to stop us at all. Even if those rooms remained available, it’s still cheaper to help arrange and organize Airbnb House Parties!! Let Gary Johnson spend his donations to buy all the expensive empty hotel rooms he wants. House parties are so much more fun than hotel rooms, and we can come together and save everyone a lot of money, and sleep a ton more people. Frankly, this move by Johnson’s campaign to block other delegates from coming to the convention is very unfair to Gary Johnson supporters who paid their own way. Now every single Gary Johnson supporter at the convention that stays at the hotel is suddenly suspect as being bought.

I told McAfee this is good news, right now our campaign is flying, I guess the explosive bomb dropped by our first campaign video seriously threatened them, I don’t care about their pettiness, and we have more interesting things to focus on. But John clearly isn’t one to keep silent and smile politely. My god, you really don’t want to fuck with him. Seriously.

Looks like Austin Petersen has been positioning this public spat as some sort of “de facto endorsement of Austin Petersen” (see image in comment below). Please take anything Austin says about McAfee as probable spin. But otherwise we’re not having any problems with Austin and his campaign. Austin was right about Johnson’s campaign buying hotel rooms, and he deserves an apology for claims that he was lying. Austin has actually been extremely friendly towards McAfee. I think he has a man crush on McAfee wink emoticon

I don’t blame Austin. I too am a huge fan of this brilliant eloquent badass that is John McAfee. I am truly grateful to him for giving me this opportunity, and trusting me so much. I hope this dispute doesn’t continue to be a distraction, and that going forward I can just focus on creating some beautiful inspiring stuff for the liberty movement. My god, I’m so excited about the 2nd video we’re working on now, much higher level than the first one. Don’t interrupt me, I don’t want to get sucked into a fight with anyone.

Nope, this issue was not an endorsement of Austin Wade Petersen or any other candidate.

What are your thoughts? Do you support Mr. McAfee’s decision? Comment below to make your opinion heard!

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